Ethernet technology is one of the most common methods of providing both point-to-point and multipoint services employed by service provider industry. Dynamic access networks are employed by service providers to provide a variety of services to customers. These networks are scalable and flexible and can be easily extended to increase reachability and/or bandwidth economically.
In most instances dynamic networks such as Metro Ethernet access networks that support a range of applications efficiently and cost effectively, can be employed to provide services such as those defined by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), to a large number of customers. A Metro Ethernet is a computer network based on the Ethernet standard with a network size that typically falls between the area covered by LAN's (Local Area Networks) and WAN's (Wide Area Networks). Most often, an area anywhere between a small group of buildings to an entire city can be covered by a Metro Ethernet network. Metro Ethernet is commonly used as a metropolitan access network to connect subscribers and businesses to a network and application based services to enterprise and residential customers. Larger businesses can employ Metro Ethernets to connect various branch locations to a company Intranet.
One of the key Ethernet service attributes is the Ethernet Virtual Connection (EVC). An EVC, as defined by the MEF, is “an association of two of more UNIs (User-to-Network Interface)”. In other words, every EVC is a logical connection at layer-2 which connects two of more UNIs which might or might not belong to the same Ethernet Access Domain (EAD), wherein a UNI is a standard Ethernet interface that is the point of demarcation between the Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) and the service provider's Metro Ethernet network. Conventionally, when activating a new service, a Network Operations Center (NOC) Operator manually create a new EVC utilizing the current topology of the underlying network.
Metro Ethernet networks are inherently dynamic in nature. Dynamic networks have a continuously changing topology. A change in topology can occur due to various reasons such as addition of new customers, increase in bandwidth or increase in density in a building or a particular area. Service providers can keep adding new devices to the network everyday to extend the topology causing the topology to change on daily basis.
During new service activation, service providers must utilize up-to-date information of the current network topology, to establish an end-to-end service. In dynamic networks however, service providers face the challenge of manually keeping track of the dynamically changing topology. Information regarding the current topology of the network is employed to determine if a new service can be activated.
Conventionally, service providers continuously monitor this dynamically changing topology and manually update the system each time changes occur to accurately activate the service. Manually entering the physical topology data every time for each EVC created by the NOC operator is a cumbersome and error prone process especially when the EAD is dynamic in nature with insertions and removals of devices potentially affecting the deployed EVC. Conventional systems cause existing customers to experience service disruption for a long period of time. Furthermore, conventional systems most often employ an operational team that plans and executes the migration of service with a scheduled down time which further increases operational costs and increases inconvenience by reducing service availability.